In the article Mexican Immigrant Replenishment and the Continuing Significance of Ethnicity and Race by Tomas R. Jamenez, Jamenez talks about how Mexican immigrant replenishment affects how Mexican-Americans assimilate. He compares Mexican- Americans directly to European-Americans.
Mexican Americans have lower levels of education than non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks. Some scholars have argued that this is a result of Mexican immigrants having relatively low levels of education especially by standards in the United States, yet this gap is persistent and continues into the fourth generation. To explain this, it has been argued that the education disadvantage for Mexican Americans largely reflects their treatment as a racial group rather than other causes suggested in the literature. Some suggest that low human capital drives second-generation Mexican-Americans makes it more difficult for them to assimilate.…show more content… On the one hand, some argue that Mexican Americans have been racialized throughout their history in the United States. Their long and continuous history as labor migrants destined to jobs at the bottom of the economic hierarchy and their historic placement at the bottom of the racial hierarchy, preceded by the conquest of the original Mexican inhabitants in what is now the U.S. Southwest, have created a distinct racial category of “Mexican” in the popular imagination. While not as heavily excluded from economic and social integration as African Americans, Mexican origin persons have encountered severe racial barriers, which have structured opportunities for them. Scholars argue that Mexican Americans lag educationally and economically even after several generations in the United States, as a result of this treatment. They have been thus limited to mostly working class jobs and from successfully integrating into middle class